DEDICATED – Speakers at the rededication of John Lothrop’s Bible at the Sturgis Library on Oct. 10 were (left to right) the Rev. Richard Stower, First Parish Unitarian Universalist Society of Scituate; Helen L. Taber of the Lothropp Family Foundation; the Rev. Dr. Kristen Harper, Unitarian Church of Barnstable; and the Rev. Reed Baer, West Parish of Barnstable.

Sturgis Library rededicates its 404-year-old treasure

He was the 12th of his father’s 22 children, and by at least one account, “a very acceptable minister” in the parish of Egerton, County Kent, England. And in 1623, his mind and heart had changed in enough ways that he wanted to lead such a new life spiritually that he had to travel to a new world.

Eventually, that new world has become the Town of Barnstable.

The Rev. John Lothrop – whose family name has also been spelled Lathrop, Lothropp, Lathropp, and Lowthorpe – left England on the ship Griffin in 1634. He brought with him a Bible that had been printed in London in 1605.

The rededication of the Bible, a treasure of the Sturgis Library, served as the centerpiece of a threefold celebration Oct. 10: a Lothrop family reunion; the installation of a specialized case to keep the Bible in a safe microclimate; and the 370th anniversary of the establishment of an English settlement in Barnstable.

Lucy Loomis, director of the library, said of the confluence of events, “This was preservation in a different way.” Loomis had secured grants from the Institute of Museum and Library Services and the Bank of America Foundation to build a case that will hold the Bible at a steady humidity and also absorb pollutants.

Loomis has compiled a book, John Lothrop in Barnstable: A 370th Anniversary Tribute, in honor of the event. Copies are for sale at the library, and include photographs of pages of the Lothrop Bible said to have been repaired from memory by the minister after he fell asleep with a candle in his hand and burned them. Loomis’s book also includes some Barnstable Patriot articles about this Bible and a bibliography and list of Web sites about Lothrop.

During the rededication on Saturday, Loomis introduced four speakers.

Rev. Richard Stower, a pastor in Scituate, where Lothrop first landed, spoke of the library’s Bible as a “wonderful artifact” and called the preservation and rededication “a testament to Rev. Lothrop, to you, and to the Town of Barnstable…the truth of the Bible is a testament to the human search” for meaning and understanding, he said.

Rev. Dr. Kristen Harper, pastor of the Unitarian Church of Barnstable, praised Lothrop for his reputed goodness and his respectful spirit toward the native Wampanoag people. She said that, according to her research, his good example kept crime “nonexistent” during his pastorate.

Rev. Reed Baer of West Parish of Barnstable congratulated the library for protecting the book and at the same time wondered if that “by sealing it away in this manner, we aren’t simply trying to protect ourselves” from its ideas. He said of the immigrants to this new world, “Their most dangerous possession was this book, which cut like a knife through pomp.”

Lothrop and his congregation, said Baer, suffered persecution because they believed that “the word of God flows not through the king but through the leaves of this volume.”

Helen L. Taber of Yarmouthport, the historian of the Lothropp Family Foundation, noted that this month marks the 20th anniversary of the creation of the foundation, that 304 people from 17 states attended, and that she knows of 14 variants of the family name.

After a family photograph around the Bible and a companion volume, a collection of sermons believed to be part of Lothrop’s library, the rededication continued next door to the library at the Daniel Davis House. Davis, according to family historian Taber, was married to a Lothrop.

The Davis House displays many heirlooms from the Lothrop family, including a sea chest, paintings, correspondence, and statuary and an altar cloth sent home by Jane Lothrop Cherry from Ceylon.

The Sturgis Library offered its visitors copies of the Lothropp Family Foundation, Inc., newsletter, which described the events this way: ”The rededication of the Bible of Rev. John, after a preservation detail, will be a once in a lifetime experience. Nothing is dearer to the hearts of his descendents than his Bible.